Fox's Reality Sweatshop 'Dance' Puts Two In Hospital

Celebrity Hospitalization Week continues here at Defamer with some distressing news from the sweat-soaked-leotard world of So You Think You Can Dance. No sooner did we note that Fox had picked up another season of the series—a reality competition seeking America's Top Krumping Ballroom Cha Cha Champion—comes news that two of the final four contestants were hospitalized for failing to keep up with the grueling demands of the show's whip-cracking, belegwarmered creator, Nigel Lythgoe. From People.com:

Two dancers in the Top 4 of Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance collapsed at rehearsals Saturday and had to be rushed by ambulance to nearby Cedars Sinai Hospital–just days before the reality series season finale.

“Two went in [Saturday] and so there was no more rehearsals, and today [Sunday] all the rehearsals were called off,” ballroom expert and SYTYCD judge Mary Murphy confirmed to PEOPLE at Fox’s 2008 Teen Choice Awards in L.A. on Sunday. “The kids are completely dehydrated – two of them. I’m sure they’re doing a lot of blood work to see if there’s anything else.”

Our hearts and prayers go out to these hard-working young hoofers, for whom winning would mean just about everything—in Twitch's case, perhaps even allowing the talented hip-hop dancer inside a Broadway theater, instead of just spinning around on a piece of cardboard outside one, as Lythgoe once so aptly put it. We'd hate to see their desperate need to board the Hot Tamale Train result in a one-way ticket on the Danced-To-Death Express.